Learning That Sticks: A Volunteer’s Remarkable Literacy Turnaround

It is just before midday on a sweltering May afternoon. Fifty-year-old Christopher Waiswa sits peacefully in the shade of his mud-brick house in Kaliro District, Eastern Uganda, gently pedaling his old Singer sewing machine. Occasionally, he pauses to trim loose threads with a pair of sharp scissors before starting again. Christopher has been a tailor for decades, just like his father before him.

For nearly two years, Christopher has been using his expertise to give back to his community by teaching young girls the art of sewing and tailoring. Since being recruited to be a Community Education Volunteer with Building Tomorrow in February of 2024, Christopher has devised a productive reward system to boost school attendance and retention among the girls of his community: for each week that the girls in his village consistently attend school, Christopher offers them one day of tailoring training free of charge. He hopes the skills he imparts will not only motivate the girls to stay in school but also empower them to be self-sufficient.

At the start of 2024, Christopher was recruited by Building Tomorrow Cohort 9 Fellow Nelson Mugabi to be a Community Education Volunteer and trained to deliver Building Tomorrow's literacy and numeracy program, Roots to Rise, in community-based camps. Roots to Rise is adapted to both school and community contexts to be cost-effective and inclusive, and targets learners who need remedial support. Moreover, Roots to Rise incorporates social-emotional learning components as well as Universal Design for Learning techniques to ensure a well-rounded and inclusive curriculum and learning environment.

After his Community Education Volunteer training, Christopher cleared space in his backyard in Nansololo Village where children in his village could gather each evening to learn. For 60 minutes every day, books and pencils are set aside as children engage in focused and interactive learning activities, utilizing their physical environment to practice their reading, writing, and math tasks. “It has a different approach – a bit playful but direct. The learning experience is engaging,” says Christopher.

Since he started running his Roots to Rise community camps, Christopher has noticed a marked improvement in his pupils’ reading, writing, and numeracy abilities. The children, most of whom struggled to read basic sentences or even words when they first arrived, can now not only read sentences but also stories with an improved level of fluency and comprehension. Specifically, the share of children in Christopher’s camp who could read and understand a paragraph rose from 4.7% to 47.5% after just 40 hours of Roots to Rise remedial lessons — a truly remarkable improvement. That kind of progress is especially striking given the condensed learning timeline and reliance on low-cost tools and techniques — a testament to the power of Community Education Volunteers and the Roots to Rise program.

Since the beginning of 2025, Christopher has reached 59 learners through Roots to Rise, 31 of whom are girls. He has also directly enrolled 11 children back into school, another core responsibility of Community Education Volunteers. Further, Christopher has taught approximately 100 hours of tailoring instruction for girls in his village, equipping them with a valuable vocational skill. The impact of this effort will only deepen as these young women continue their education and build their futures.

Building Tomorrow’s Community Education Teams — Building Tomorrow Fellows, Community Education Volunteers, and teachers — have supported hundreds of thousands of learners in developing strong literacy and numeracy skills through dedicated changemakers like Christopher. In 2025 alone, Building Tomorrow has reached more than 195,000 children through literacy and numeracy camps, both in schools and communities, ensuring quality community-powered education for children.

Learn more about the work of Building Tomorrow